Emily Feather and the Chest of Charms
Read Emily Feather and the Chest of Charms Online
Authors: Holly Webb
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“I love the holidays,” Emily murmured, kicking off her flip-flops and stretching out her toes to the sunshine.
“I suppose.” Her younger brother Robin sighed, and poked gently at an ant with the end of a grass stem. The ant froze, bewildered, and then scuttled away.
Emily stuck another grass stem into her book to mark her page, and rolled over to look at him properly. “What, don't you?”
Robin shrugged. “Holidays are just a bit boring. Nothing to do⦔
“I know! That's what's so nice about it. Not having to get up for school, no rushing around⦔
“You
never
rush around,” Robin snorted. “And if Lark and Lory didn't chase you out of the house, you'd be late for school every day.”
Emily propped her chin on her hands. “Maybe,” she admitted. Her big sisters were very good at organizing her, it was true. Emily just wasn't a morning person. She did like school, but it was so nice to have a change in the holidays â going to bed later, and not being woken up by Mum shouting up the stairs to her little attic room. This morning she'd slept until the sunlight filtered through the wavy glass in her bedroom windows, and the soft, golden glow had woken her. It was blissful. And she had six whole weeks of it ahead, too.
“If you're bored now, and it's only the first week of the holidays, what are you going to be like by the end of August?” she asked Robin.
“I should think I'll probably have eaten my own toes by then,” Robin muttered gloomily.
“You could always go â well, you know â back home⦔ Emily suggested. “To the fairy world. That wouldn't be boring.”
Robin glared at her. “For a start,
no
. Mum and Dad would kill me. Haven't you learned enough to know that by now? And anyway, it isn't my home. I've never lived there. None of us have.”
Emily nodded slowly. “I suppose not. I hadn't really thought of that.” She picked another grass stem, and chewed it. “So, where do you actually belong? Here or there?”
“I don't know,” Robin admitted. “I've always lived here. I only visit the other place.”
“But doesn't it feel different when you're there? Doesn't it feel like that's where you're meant to be?” Emily asked him, curiously. “I mean, there you can be in your real form.”
She glanced enviously at his shoulders, remembering the soft brownish-grey wings that folded round them so naturally. The wings were the main thing she envied Lark and Lory and Robin. Not just that they could fly, which was amazing enough, but the beauty of the wings themselves â the soft colours of the feathers, the arching shapes they made and the way they spilled out of Lark and Lory and Robin's shoulders like a waterfall. And they were so soft, so strokable.
A few weeks earlier, Emily had found out that she had been adopted â that her father had found her abandoned down by the river and brought her home. It had been strange enough, to find out suddenly that her family weren't related to her at all, and that no one knew who her real parents were or where she'd come from. But that had only been the beginning. In her family, Emily wasn't the unusual one.
Her parents, little brother and older twin sisters were all fairies. In disguise. Her lovely old house, the house she'd always known, was actually a gateway to a fairy world, full of strange and secret doors. The mirror on the landing at the top of the stairs had been occasionally used as a spyhole by a curious water sprite, and her family's pet dog wasn't just a dog either.
It had been a lot to get used to.
Emily wasn't sure that she would ever be used to it, actually. But she was mostly past the panicked, disbelieving stage. Now she was fascinated.
“I wish we could go back,” she sighed to Robin. “To visit properly, though, not just because something's gone wrong. I want to see it all â that amazing river, and the forests â and not while I'm being chased through them. I want to look at things. To see all the people.”
“But you've probably seen more of that world than I have,” Robin pointed out. “Whenever I go, it's with Mum and Dad, and we're all dressed up, and it's like a big occasion â an official visit. I don't get to meet people, and talk to them like you have.”
“The only people I got to talk to were trying to kidnap me,” Emily protested. “And the next time I was being hunted by great enormous slavering dogs. I wish we could just sneak through one of the doors, but I'd be scared.”
Once Emily had got over some of her amazement, she had bribed her dad with tea and chocolate muffins, and tried to get him to tell her exactly what was going on in their house and behind the doors. She still didn't know everything, of course. She couldn't expect to find out about a whole world in the space of one cup of tea. But at least now she had some idea.
Her father had explained that he was a watchman. He was there to guard the doors, and to protect the two worlds from each other. Occasionally, before the doors had been sealed and guarded, those from the fairy world would try to tempt humans through them. There was something about humans â particularly human children â that kept the fairy elders young. It was some sort of energy, which Emily didn't really understand. But she knew it was true.
She had strayed through one of the doors, completely by accident, in a surge of anger and unhappiness after she had found out the truth about her family. She had run up the stairs to hide away in her room, but her purple-painted bedroom door had opened to somewhere else â a beautiful, dangerous place, full of fairies who wanted to keep her. One of them, Lady Anstis, had tempted her to stay, offering her what looked like a bowl of the most delicious fruit. But it had been loaded with spells, and if Emily had eaten it, the fairy magic would have made human food seem tasteless and strange. Even if Emily had returned home, she would have wasted away.
The fairy Ladies, like Anstis, were growing more and more powerful, her father had explained. There was no queen of the fairies any longer â she had died years before â and the king ruled alone. So there was a constant battle between the Ladies of his court. The ultimate prize would be to persuade him to marry again.
“If we went backâ” Emily started to say.
“Which we won't,” Robin snapped.
“I know! But if we did, do you think I could have a disguise, maybe? So that people there wouldn't recognize me?”
“I don't know⦔ Robin said thoughtfully. “Maybe, maybe not. They'd be able to sense that you were human whatever we made you look like, I think. And you're not just human, either. Not with your magic.” He frowned. “I don't think they'd be able to mistake you for anyone else, Ems.”
Emily ducked her head to hide her shy, delighted smile. She couldn't help it. It was when Robin had said “your magic”. She knew that she didn't have anything like the power that Lark and Lory and Robin did. But because her family hid their true origins, and lived as humans, her brothers and sisters couldn't actually
do
much magic anyway. They might slip in just a little smidge of it, here and there â Emily was sure that Lark and Lory used it on their hair, which was always perfect â but their parents could tell if they used any more than that â which meant trouble.
Still, even for Emily to have that tiny dusting of magic was more than she'd ever dreamed. She gave a little gulp of excitement as she thought about it. She hadn't been born with magic, like her brother and sisters, but it was just possible that she had borrowed some⦠She and Robin had decided that it must have come from growing up in a house where magic was bulging out all over the place.
Sometimes Emily wondered how she had got as far as ten years old without realizing that she lived in a fairy stronghold. But then, she'd just taken all the odd little things as normal. The moving pictures in her windows were just daydreams, she'd thought. And the way her sisters' bedroom doors seemed to change colour with their mood was just the odd way the light fell on the landing. It wasn't magic.
Except it was, and now a little bit of it was inside her. Emily had made it stronger, too, by her two visits to the fairy land through the doors. The first time she'd gone had been an accident â just blundering through the wrong door. But the second time, she had meant to do it.
A water sprite had helped Emily and Lark and Lory escape from Lady Anstis. She had shown them a doorway back to the human world. But she had paid dearly for her help. She was chased away from her river, and hunted through the lands. Emily had used her growing magic to force her way back to the fairy world and rescue Sasha, the water-sprite, from the huntsmen's hounds.
Emily had been returning Sacha's kindness by helping her escape. If she hadn't managed to drag Sasha away, the water sprite would eventually have tired and given in and died. Emily's tiny scrap of magic had saved her.
It had been scary but exciting. Emily still couldn't quite believe she'd actually done it.
“Are you
really
bored?” Emily asked Robin now, trying to sound casual.
He only growled in response, poking irritably at another innocent ant.
“Because I can think of one thing we could do.”
“I've told you, we're not going through any doors! Even if the huntsmen didn't recognize you or your magic, it's still crazy dangerous, and we'd get in massive trouble.”
“I don't mean that. I just wondered⦠If I've got magic in me now, do you think I could ever do anything with it?” She looked at him hopefully. “Could you teach me?”
Robin stared at her in surprise.
“I mean â didn't you ever have lessons in how to use your magic?” Emily asked him. “What spells to use? Special words? Anything like that?”
Robin shook his head. “No. It's just there. It's part of me, and if I want to use it I do. Except most of the time I don't, of course, because of Mum and Dad's stupid rules. I never had lessons. It doesn't really work like that.”
Emily sighed. “Of course it doesn't. Oh, you're so
lucky
!”
“There are things you could learn,” a quiet voice added, and Emily rolled over suddenly, peering up into the sunlight. There were sunspots in her eyes, and she was squinting against the glare, but it wasn't the light that made the girl in front of her glitter.
Sasha wasn't like Robin and the others, pretending to be human. She was in her full fairy form, and she shone. The long tunic she wore fell to her ankles, and swirled around her like pouring water, liquid and glinting. Her hair swirled too, blowing around her shoulders like waterweed in a fast-flowing stream, and her eyes were the silver-green of a sunlit river. No one could mistake her for anything but a water fairy.
Which was why she spent most of her time hidden in the garden pond.
Emily and Robin were hiding her, for the moment, until they could work out a good way to tell their parents what Emily had done. Emily was certain that she had been right to save Sasha, but her parents might not see it the same way.
Although her father worked as a writer on this side of the doors, his true job was to keep fairy people from crossing over to the human world. It would be his duty to send Sasha back, whatever the consequences.
Emily stared up at her, wide-eyed. “What things?” she asked. “Oh, and I brought you this,” she added, picking up a little parcel wrapped in greaseproof paper, and holding it out to Sasha.
“Is it chocolate?” the water fairy asked eagerly, sitting down next to her, and unwrapping her gift. Her hair waved and coiled with excitement as she pulled out a fat, squidgy chocolate brownie.
“Did you bring one for me?” Robin demanded.
“No! You practically ate your weight in them yesterday. That's the only one left.”
Sasha delicately broke off a small piece of the brownie, and nibbled at it. “Even if I could go back home, I don't think I would,” she sighed. “Marsh marigold roots and watercress simply don't compare.” She looked thoughtfully at Emily. “You know, I do wonder if you already put your magic into your cooking.”
“Do you think so?” Emily smiled shyly. She was used to people telling her how good her cooking was, but this was different. “I don't do it on purpose.”
“No, but magic is instinctive. As Robin said, we don't have to do âspells' for it to happen. We just use it when we need it. And for you, I think the magic comes out when you cook. Especially for your family.”
Emily nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. It is my favourite thing to do. That and draw.”
Sasha broke off another piece of brownie, and chuckled as Robin watched her enviously. She put it in her mouth, and eyed him as she chewed. “Gorgeous⦠So what do you think about when you're cooking?”
Emily blinked at her. “Um. The recipe, I suppose.”
“That can't be everything,” Robin disagreed. “For a start most of the time you know the recipe off by heart anyway. I don't know why you can't ever get your times tables right.”